Turning On or Dropping Out

Sir: Congratulations! Your article, "The Message of History's Biggest Happening" [Aug. 29], does a superb job of furthering the moral decay of this nation. The photograph, "Boys and Girls Relate in a Nearby River," was just a little too much for my 31-year-old "traditional values." When I was their age, we "related" with our clothes on.

If this is truly, as you say, "what's happening," then I'm dropping out.

MRS. A. ANDERSON HUBER Atlanta

Sir: It was so encouraging to read something favorable regarding the much-talked-about younger generation--how they can behave and take care of themselves when left to do so!

As a parent of a long-haired boy (and a long-haired daughter) who still has faith in them and their ideals, I was most pleased and grateful for this fair coverage.

MRS. T. S. WOODS Redondo Beach, Calif.

Sir: I was there, and I'm proud of it. For three days I looked around at the generation that I am part of. This group of strangers sat, listened, talked and related, but related completely without violence. Everyone did "their own thing," without causing a ruckus. We proved that under difficult circumstances we don't need to fight to rid ourselves of aggressive feelings; no, instead we try to enjoy life through music and each other. My peers are indeed beautiful people.

CAREN SLOBODKIN Brookline, Mass.

Sir: They're gonna build, no matter how they destroy. They're gonna teach love, no matter who they hurt. They're gonna be useful by being useless. They're showing commitment by not being committed. They're gonna lead a new social order without a leader. They're gonna reject materialism, no matter how much they have to sponge off the parents. They're showing a new morality, no matter how immoral they have to be to prove it. They're going to scrub the world down, no matter how bathless they are.

They are going to show a new purpose by having no purpose. They're gonna create a new system of nonsystem. They want to create new rules of no rules. They don't understand their parents' misunderstanding. They reject technology by using the microphone, the car, the roads, maps, electricity, medicines, drugs, booze and prepared foods. They want to be nonproductive on someone's production. Now I understand why I don't understand.

DR. Louis GARRETT Canton, Ohio

For the Record

Sir: Your story, "The Dilemmas of Power" [Aug. 29], contains a garbled paragraph that is misleading and embarrassing to me and my company. Observations about the alleged harmful effects of fossil-fuel burning on public health appear" to be erroneously attributed to me. You should correct the record.

ROBERT H. GERDES Chairman, Executive Committee Pacific Gas and Electric Co. San Francisco

>TIME regrets that, due to a production error, an entire quote from Mr. Gerdes was dropped. He said: "There has got to be some sympathetic attitude by the public toward the problems that we are facing, if it wants to have enough power to keep the air conditioning going."

The observations that followed this remark were TIME'S, not Mr. Gerdes'.

Menace of the Machines

Sir: Frankly, your article "Bathtub on Wheels" [Aug. 22] depressed me greatly. There seems to be an ever-growing group of American young men who simply regard our remaining wildlands as obstacle courses for their machines. Anyone hoping to escape the filth and din of cities for the quiet beauty of our woods, mountains or deserts is in for a rude shock. He is greeted by the rattling snarl of trail bikes, dune buggies and the like.

Hundreds of rugged American "sportsmen" are blazing a trail of gouged hillsides, crushed and broken vegetation, and discarded beer cans. As with racing cars and dragsters, I would like to see certain less aesthetic areas set aside for the exclusive use of such machinery. The remaining wildlands should be closed to such off-the-road vehicles before what is left of their solitude, scenic beauty and scientific value is forever lost.

TIMOTHY W. BROWN Los Angeles

O Happy Day

Sir: Although you quoted me quite accurately as calling Judge Haynsworth a "mediocre slob" [Aug. 29], you did not add, as I did, that his appointment to the Supreme Court, in preference to such as Professor Freund or Judge Friendly, pleased me no end because Haynsworth, as a not quite bright conservative will have little or no influence on the court or the law, save with his own vote.

FRED RODELL Professor of Law Yale University New Haven, Conn.

Sir: Allow a word from one who served on a faculty committee that recommended him for an honorary degree from his alma mater Furman University.

You quoted Professor Fred Rodell (whoever he is) of the Yale Law School as referring to Haynsworth as a "mediocre slob." May I ask that if you insist on quoting from representatives of such institutions you request them to do a little upgrading of their faculties? There are many of us who are not always impressed or intimidated by the Ivy League, and we still appreciate gentlemen who have differing points of view. It doesn't take much sense to see that the "mediocre slob" statement is much more a reflection upon the one who said it than upon Judge Haynsworth.

JOE M. KING Professor of Religion Furman University Greenville, S.C.

More by Less

Sir: In paying tribute to Mies van der Robe [Aug. 29], you managed to list his achievements yet retain the spirit of his modesty. You said more by saying less. I'm sure he would have appreciated it.

ALBERT CHRIST-JANER Pratt Institute New York City

Anti-Knock Additive

Sir: As president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, I am compelled to protest the article entitled "Autos --Bargain Season" [Aug. 22]. Your reporter has indicted an industry vital to the economic well-being of this country with false and misleading statements that have discredited the vast majority of dealers who are quality merchants and community-minded citizens.

I know of no case in which a factory grants its dealers rebates in excess of $200 per car during the fall cleanup sales campaign. In my make, Chevrolet, we are to receive $50 per car only after we have achieved 25% of our sales objective for the cleanup. To receive the maximum rebate of $150, we would have to attain 75% of our sales objective. Nor are the rebates retroactive. It should also be noted that traditionally the rebate is passed on to the customer via a price reduction on the car.

Nor, in all my life, have I ever heard of a 5-c- rebate from the manufacturer for every mile registered on the odometer of a dealer's demonstration car.

Many automobile owners have had a go at selling their used cars. And usually one experience has been sufficient: they realized it wasn't worth the time involved, the effort or the expense. No other industry preserves and protects the price of its used product anywhere near so well as the automobile industry.

LYMAN W. SLACK Washington, B.C.

> TIME did not intend to indict auto dealers in general, and regrets having given the impression that the industry grants such large rebates.

Lighting the Mite

Sir: It's a shame that you told us that half the population is afflicted with hair follicle parasites [Aug. 29]. Just imagine what this will do to the Madison Avenue ad alley boys. Already, I'll bet they are lying awake nights, fondling their infected eyelashes and trying to create a nice catchy name for a new frailty to be exploited whenever a giant advertiser comes up with an alleged remedy. Oh, well--halitosis, b.o., iron-poor blood, nagging backache and some others were becoming a bit shopworn anyway.

HAROLD LEE Ocean City, NJ.

Sir: I'm not going to have little mites running all over my face. I'm going to sleep with the light on.

CECY WILSON St. Louis

One More Time

Sir: In your amusing description [Aug. 22] of William F. Buckley's feud with me, you give the impression that Esquire simply opened its pages to us so that we might continue our Chicago act. This is not the case. Mr. Buckley went to Esquire with a 54-page attack on me and asked them if they would publish it. They said they would, but only if I replied. Mr. Buckley agreed, slyly stipulating that the two pieces not be in the same issue. Reluctantly, I answered him. Not happy with my piece, he then brought suit against me, then Esquire, for having continued a tiresome exchange which he--not I, not Esquire--had reopened. Personally, I am grieved by the whole affair, having always regarded Bill not only as a wonderful human being but as a great American.

GORE VIDAL Klosters, Switzerland

Sir: I do not mean to reproach you, or even to give you the impression that I think you'd care if I did. But I do believe that the writer of the story on Vidal and me turned in a remarkable performance. "When they fence on television or in type, bitchiness erodes their polish and learned discourse dissolves into tantrums." The man who wrote that sentence doesn't know the difference between a tantrum and a psalm. The writer then goes on to stick into my mouth an unpleasant sentence I never wrote (the author of that sentence is clearly designated in my piece as the Times Literary Supplement). But the extraordinary achievement was to quote Vidal's charges against me, in particular that my views are those of the founders of the Third Reich, which, were it so, would, among other things, impeach the professional resources of TIME magazine for not having discovered this signal piece of intelligence in the course of preparing a cover story on me. I write to you because I care what you believe, and because, in the same issue of TIME magazine, you exhort all of America to indignation. I don't see a better provocation to indignation than Vidal, and it surprises me--hell, it pains me--that your writer should, after acknowledging that the low blows were Vidal's, repeat them matter-of-factly.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. New York City

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